Literature and the Middle Ages

Literature and the Middle Ages

The Renaissance invented the Middle Ages in order to define itself; the Enlightenment perpetuated them in order to admire itself; and the Romantics revived them in order to escape from themselves. In their widest ramifications 'the Middle Ages' thus constitute one of the most prevalent cultural myths of the modern world.

-- Brian Stock, Listening for the Text.

The Middle Ages is a time of hypothesis wherein one of the most hypothetical concepts is time. The present essay addresses time as a conceptual and historical problem, in literary, religious, and practical terms. The interested student will find here valuable information on the origins of French literature, how the Middle Ages got its name, theological and everyday measurements of time, and the relationships of myth and fiction to genealogy in the founding of aristocratic families and feudal dynasties.

Somewhere between the fall of the Roman Empire and the Renaissance there was a middle time. During this period, the French language was born from the cradle of latinity. The ninth century, in fact, provides us with the first testimonies of what will become the language of French literature. Indeed, in the year 813, the emergence of the importance and widespread use of vernacular language in Europe is marked by the Council of Tours which, by giving priests the right to pronounce sermons in the common tongue ("rusticam"), particularly in French ("gallicam") and German ("teudiscam"), sought to mediate a crisis in preaching by closing the linguistic gap that had developed between the clergy and the lay people. Moreover, on 14 February 842, the Strasbourg Oaths renewed the military and political alliance between Louis the German a...

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...500. Vol. XI/1 of Grundriss der Romanischen Literaturen des Mittelalters. Eds. Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, et al. Heidelberg: Carl Winter Universittsverlag, 1986. 135-156.

Duggan, Joseph J. "The Experience of Time as a Fundamental Element of the Stock of Knowledge in Medieval Society." In Gumbrecht, et al. 127-134.

Eco, Umberto. Travels in Hyperreality. Trans. William Weaver. San Diego, New York, London: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1986.

Edelman, Nathan. "The Early Uses of Medium Aevum, Moyen Age, Middle Ages." The Eye of the Beholder. Ed. Jules Brody. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1974. 58-81.

Gour�vitch, Aaron J. Les Cat�gories de la culture m�di�vale. Trans. H�l�ne Courtin, Nina Godneff. Paris: Gallimard, 1983.

Stock, Brian. Listening for the Text: On the Uses of the Past. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990.